


luminous and hopeful beings

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodhi-Centric, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Bodhi, Gen, Shatterpoints, no knowledge of knights of the republic necessary to understand this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-15 08:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9226661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: In a galaxy where Initiate Rook was a Jedi youngling until Darth Vader marched on the Temple, Bodhi joins the Empire willingly, the better to destroy it from the inside.[or, there remains another jedi beside yoda and obi-wan, a young thing with a heart full of hope, raised by a court of force-ghosts. together they pull off a crazy plan that might just turn the war to the alliance's advantage.this is his story.]





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

  
_Emotion, yet peace._  
Ignorance, yet knowledge.  
Passion, yet serenity.  
Chaos, yet harmony.  
Death, yet the Force.

_[ **0** ]_

  
.

It was his clumsiness that saved Bodhi. He had tripped in the gardens, skinned his knees and fallen on his ankle. It was only a sprain, but the créche master had sent him to the healers to be sure, so that by the time Knight Skywalker marched inside the temple with a trail of blood and screams, Bodhi was fidgeting in his chair and trying not to scratch the bacta bandages.

He felt the first deaths in the Force, distant and staggering. It reminded him of when he had held a butterfly too tightly and it had died, the jagged wound in the Force when it died, and the palpable absence it left behind.

Later, when Bodhi was older and much too familiar with the feeling of death in the Force, he would compare it to the sound of blasterfire — the short certainty of danger, the almost-color, the force of impact. But Bodhi was only six and only an Initiate with a sprained ankle, and he sat in his chair with wide eyes, staring as the Healers moved patients, created barricades, prepared for combat in their own home. He was almost forgotten, until the Healer that had bandaged him came back and picked him up.

"Master, there's a child here," she called out, and another healer cursed. The Master Healer, lightsaber ready as she spoke hurriedly with other armed healers, turned to her and gave Bodhi a frown.

"Take him away Healer, fast as you can. Not the créches, away from the Temple, away."

Then Bodhi was lifted up by webbed hands, pressed close to a robe that smelled of bacta and bitter salves. The healer took him from the Healing Hall, through the back door that lead to the storage units and cargo bay, past abandoned corridors and bloody corridors and shadowed corridors. Sometimes he had to be very quiet as she went to scout ahead, and Bodhi curled close and shivering until she came back.

"What's your name, Initiate?" She whispered, when they crossed along line of closed doors.

"Bodhi Rook, Master Healer."

She smiled, rows of small, pointy teeth revealed for a small moment. As long as he lives, Bodhi will never forget that smile. "Hello, Bodhi. I'm Healer Bant, and I'm going to keep you safe."

But that, of course, was a lie.

 

 

 

 

 

_[ **1** ]_

  
.

He never stops using his own name. It's a stupid danger, objectively speaking. Anyone that had access to the Jedi Temple's data could connect the dots, and while there aren't many people with that type of clearance, it would be just like him to meet them and raise uncomfortable questions. It doesn't help that his whole plan balances on the fact that he is willingly putting himself in a position where he might very well meet those people.

Still, his name stays. When nothing else remains, it stays.

"Identification?" The droid asks. Behind it the officer is looking up at him with accessing eyes.

"Bohdi Rook. I'm here to enlist as an Imperial pilot."

 

  
(That's not how it begins, but it is a beginning of a sort. And an ending, too.

The Force longs for balance in all ways.)

 

  
The Terrable Sector Service Academy, like all branches of Imperial Academy, is an imposing structure of durasteel and spotless white. It is the sterile setting for sterile classes, without any space for academic irreverence, or, Force forbid, creativity. The student-recruits, now cadets, are given holo maps and a concise tour, before being shown to their quarters.

"You can still turn to the Alliance," Meetra Surik says, looking around with a dubious expression.

"I've been in cells with more character," Atton agrees. Even in death Atton Rand has a talent for swagger and deliberate slouching that Bodhi had tried to emulate in his teenage years, with little success. He leans now against the cold wall, as if he had a body lean with, blue vapor disappearing fading against the steel.

"I've conducted interrogations in cells with better décor," counters Revan. "The standards of education in my Empire were never so low as this."

He gives a disdainful look around, his expression encompassing Bodhi's quarters, the Academy and the whole political system all at once. Nobody did evil disdain as well as Grandfather, Bodhi thinks uncharitably. It's probably a secret ex-Sith power of his.

It is also probable that Bodhi's irritation comes from the long, uncomfortable trip. And the nerves. Force, but he's nervous as kriffing hell.

"I'm sure your foot soldiers would agree," Aton says cheerfully. Nothing good could come of that confrontation, so Bodhi puts down his bag and steps forward between the ghosts.

"Do you mind? I have to change."

Atton grumbles and Grandfather gives one last contemptuous glance at Bodhi's new uniform, but they fade back into the Force, blue shapes leaving empty space where they had been-but-not. Bodhi sighs, suddenly alone in the sparse room, and starts taking off his clothes.

There is a mirror in the bathroom, small and purely functional, for the students to make sure they are presentable. Bodhi stands in front of it, tries to flatten his hair, straightens his tight jacket.

The reflection in front of him is blue-pale and faded at the edges. It always is. It takes focus and a forceful tightening of the muscles, clenching of hands and eyes to center himself. I am flesh and not Force. I am alive, not a ghost. I am alive. I am not a ghost. It works, after a while, as long as he ignores the foreign pull of the hundred of minds around him and the far more familiar tugging of the Force.

It calls to him, singing with the song of stars, a song with a hundred rimes and an unknowable rhythm. If he goes very still and very focused, he can listen to specific voices among the music, and if they hear the echo of his presence, they might come and pay a visit.

Bodhi is used to it by now; it has been so long. It is difficult to recall a time when the music wasn't clear, when the dead weren't closer than the living. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth, the not remembering, the not knowing if he might ever have been anything different than what he is.

Is it to terrible that he want to make something worthwhile with what he has?

Atton hadn't been impressed with this plan from the beginning. Oh, he liked it just fine, but he didn't think Bodhi could pull it of, and he had had no compunction in telling him so. Atton is like that, and Bodhi hadn't been surprised. He doesn't think he can pull this off without a hitch, but it is worth the try, as nerve wracking as the whole thing is.

Grandfather Revan is of the opinion that it was a viable idea, but doesn't like how dangerous it was, though he never says it. He is the one among the ghosts who has spent the less time around Bodhi snd the most effort in investigating the Empire, and his insights are always useful, when he bothers sharing them. Disconcerting, too, but Bodhi's relationship with his ghostly ancestor is based on unspoken acceptance of personal quirks and occasional slips into the darker side of the Force, so that is nothing new.

Grandmother Bastile —Master Shan, same thing, except in all the ways that it wasn't — is neutral about it, considering these are his Trails and she the one judging him, but he knows she supports him. It is the sort of slow, insidious work she is fond of. What better way for Bodhi to show his worth as a Jedi Sentinel than to use her lessons from inside the Empire?

Meetra hasn't said anything, but he hadn't expected she would. She shows up soon enough, keeps him silent company while Bodhi makes a suitably nervous and mostly honest impression on his roommate, after the first classes and the harrowing experience of physical examinations. The medics make him run and lift weights, both of which are a struggle to do without using the Force, and a droid takes his measurements with clinical apathy.

The big problem is the blood test. Bodhi has to stand very still while they draw his blood in the med bay (trying and failing not to remember another healing space, just as busy and completely different), and somehow trick the computer to come up with a midi-chlorian count a good sixty points lower than it is. Bodhi isn't one to brag, not having anyone but his family or his superiors to talk to, but even if he were, being a weakling in Force would serve him much better than his actual count right about now.

Still, he had needed to train for months before flying to a planet with military outposts to be sure that he could pull this off: the needle dripping on the pad, the number settling on a mediocre 37, the medics bored face as he waves him away.

"Next," she says, and Bodhi has to fall into meditation breathing not to sigh in relief. He hides his shaking hands in his pockets and breathes through his nose.

After it is lunch. He sits alone, drifting away from his classmates and finding a place that leaves his back exposed. A rookie mistake, to go with his nervous eyes and dry lips. Everything one can expect from a young recruit with nothing to distinguish him from so many walking cannon fodders. His academic career will be predictable and unremarkable, and no one will ever think to connect him to the careful avalanche of leaked information, because, if he did it right, nobody would notice until it was too late.

Bodhi eats his rations and tries not to smile.

 

 

 

This is the story of a war. In a sideways, crooked sort of way, it is the continuation of a story about a warrior.

Not a great warrior, decked in armor and wielding weapons bright with destiny, though there is plenty of destiny involved, and duels too. Not a brave warrior, or a fast one, or a selfless one. A warrior is one that lives through a war and fights, in whatever capacity they can, to whatever goals they value. Warriors can be valorous and honorable and kind, but they rarely are. They are usually young. Often, that is all they ever end up being.

This is the story of a warrior named Bastila Shan, who converted a monster and returned light to the galaxy, who was a Jedi and a Sith and in both paths, was a Sentinel. Who stood watch, and waited, and acted, when she had the chance and need to.

This is the story of her many-times grandchild, who took after her more than anyone else.

 

 

 

The thing about being raised by an Ex-Sith, The Exile, A Jedi Sentinel and an assassin is that none of it matters more than the fact that they are dead. They are only the shadows of people who once shaped the galaxy, and they had come together after death to raise Bodhi Rook, sniveling Jedi Initiate hiding in a maintenance closet while Darth Vader slaughtered a kind healer.

All things considered, Bodhi could have turned out much worse.

He could have turned out much better, too, but he tries not to think about that.

In another life, he would have worn dark robes and wielded the yellow 'sabers of the Sentinels. His feet would know all the paths in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and his master would be a living person, not the dead shade of a great-great-great grandmother. In another life, Bodhi Rook would have continued to be an Initiate, then, with any luck, a Padawan, a Knight, perhaps even a Master. The war might have gone on, but then again, it might have ended in peace and victory for the Republic. He might have grown up without fear, with only the sure serenity of the teachings and his own personal growth to attend to.

It feels so strange to think of that. As bothersome and conflicted his family can be, as lonely and afraid he is, he cannot think of a life where there are no clusters of ghosts shadowing his steps, shouting encouragements and whispering lessons, rebukes, old wisdom. Without Darth Revan who is only Grandfather, and Grandmother who is always Master Shan.

The best theory is that it was a consequence of being a young Force sensitive, so close to the happening of the Temple Slaughter and Order 66. A shatterpoint of the Force, they call him, but not with any certainty. He isn't like other shatterpoints, really. The problem isn't that Bodhi cant feel the Force; the problem was that he could feel it too well.

And it is a problem, most of the time. Nothing shows it to him more than the communal living of the Academy, where every moment can make your future and personal relationships are never more than self serving. Bodhi, who had spent most of his childhood more as a spirit of a child than a flesh-and-bone one, and lived his childhood in near poverty as the lone living human in a forgotten planet, is used to trying not to stand out when around other people.

Other living people, that is; he has no problem being himself among the dead, but the living are different. They think differently, act differently, have conflicting goals and clouded motivations. Force ghosts might be mysterious and manipulative, but they are honest too, their intentions shining in the Force with clarity.

Bodhi is Jedha born and bred, Coruscant fled, Dantooine raised. The Old Enclave of Dantooine used to be a place of learning not unlike the Imperial Academy, cultivating only those Jedi with promising talents. If this had been the First Galatic Civil war, Bodhi would never have stepped foot in those holy grounds. But this was another war, and there had been a lack of places a Initiate could hide from the Empire.

The ghosts had helped. No doubt he would have died without their aid, either because his force presence would have alerted Darth Vader, or any other dozens of moments when he had nearly been found and captured in the seedy streets of Coruscant. Those days are a blur to Bodhi, mostly. Only impressions remained: the grief, the smell of spices in the lower lever markets, the orange headdress of the pilot that had taken him away. He had been wrecked, psyche a spiderweb of cracks growing as the Force kept bleeding with a deep wound.

It is still bleeding. Bodhi thinks that maybe the Force has always been hurting, that it always will. It is a thought he refuses to believe, not out of bravery or righteousness, but because it is too sad to bear.

Might-have-beens made for lousy meditation practice, though, and only served to make him frustrated and sullen. In the end Bodhi had lived, and almost thrived in the abandoned jungles, where the air was always humid and you could tell storms were coming by the way the old Enclave columns tremble.

 

_[ **2** ]_

 

The Terrable Sector has great storms, too, rolling waves of purple-black clouds encroaching on the sky, but the foundations of this place of learning do not shake. They are not even twenty years old, well kept by the wealth of the Empire. The drills continue even in the rain, and the study room maintain their severe quiet as thunder blooms purple and loud in the air, casting stark profiles on the rows of young, studious faces.

The planet never feels less welcoming than in those days, with its foreign dryness even during storms, the walls seeming to press closer and closer. He tried to distract himself by furthering his private project.

He should have known better. There were too many people inside, the weather now too dire to train, and all the piloting classes cancelled. It was foolishness and arrogance on his part to think he could sway such a large group subtly enough without consequences.

He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the porcelain. He should flush the toilet, but he can't make himself raise his arm, and anyway he is shaking too much for that.

His head aches, a deep pain that goes from his back to his forehead, the physical manifestation of another hurt. The Force presses against his awareness no matter how small he makes himself.

Overstimulation did this to him sometimes, left him a shaking mess retching and trembling. He had known this would happen when he enlisted, this proximity to so many pulsing presences. In Dantooine it was more bearable; in Dantooine it was him and the jungle and the dead, thousands of life forces tangled in one thrumming backdrop.

In the Academy everything and everyone is different, orbits far apart and cold, individual presences standing put sharp and long-shadowed.

He is just glad it isn't Grandfather seeing him puking all over his shiny Empire-issued boots.

"I have good news and bad news for you. How would you like me to begin?"

"The good news first." Bodhi likes to try his hand at optimism, sometimes. He doesn't feel like it will be much good now, but it's worth the try.

Meetra looks down and presses the impression of a hand against his back. He feels it only in the Force, a brush of compassion-care-worry against his consciousness. He is thankful for it all the same.

"Well, the good news is that your connection to the Unifying Force is remarkable, and should allow you to maintain contact and advice with plenty of helpful spirits. But you already knew that." She gives him a small upturn of the lips that fades quickly. "On the other hand, your relationship with the Living Force is hutt shit."

He huffs out a laugh. Between her bluntness and Atton's tendency to curse, it was a surprise Bodhi hadn't turned out crasser.

"I knew that too," he says, sheepish and a little shamefully. Bodhi was decent at gardening, more because of personal preference and necessity, good enough at lifting rocks and evading blasters - he had trained enough with the old droids from the Enclave for that - but when it came down to it, he wasn't anything special in the Living Force. Part of it is that his own connection to the Unifying Force was so strange, focused on presences and oddities in the Force, to the detriment of divination or spiritual insight.

Bodhi's band of spiritual insight usually came straight from the spirits, and wasn't so much insight as unasked-for guidance. Along with his lack of athletic ability and tendency to take the less violent aproach, plus anxiety, he preferred to avoid fighting at all costs.

(That was, after all, why he was at the Academy. No better place to wage bloodless war than in the ready minds of young soldiers, already open to indoctrination.

He would never make a great Jedi warrior. He had made his peace with that, and with the murky memories of being young and looking out of a Temple window towards Coruscant while his créche mates did more advanced katas. A Sentinel didn't need to be a warrior anyway, and Bodhi had always been a Sentinel more than anything else.

(On a completely unrelated note, the number of defections of Academy cadets have been rising considerably in the last months. Not enough to be suspicious, not yet, but it is a start.)

Which was why, when one of the lead research scientists of the Empire came to give a talk at the Academy, Bodhi's lazy mental prodding had tripped over the Empire's new weapon.

"Oh Force, Meetra," he whispers, swallowing around the lump in his throat and fighting to regain control over his own terror. A planet killer. Good stars, a planet killer. He hadn't thought that he would ever seen one in his lifetime, and had been happier for that ignorance.

He doesn't dare ask what she thought of it. Bodhi knowns about Mandalore V — know that it was Meetra Surik that gave the order to destroy a planet and the two fleets fighting for it, that it was that event that turned her into a shatterpoint. That even now, dead and part of the Force, her presence is muted and faded, a wound scarred over.

"I can't do this on my own," he says, more than a little frantic. The fear surges up his limbs again and has him tugging st his own hair, blinking against the bathroom lights. "I can't, I can't, I'm already the last one, I can't do this too --"

"But you are not alone, child," she says, softer, and it is neither a lie nor the truth.

(An aside: Meetra Surik never had any children of her own.)

"I know, Master Meetra," Bodhi says, sighing and swallowing and trying to focus solely on his breathing and her Force presence beside him.

(Another aside: Bodhi Rook has two grandparents, a Atton and an Exile. Sometimes when be says Master that is not what he means.)

The door handle shifted. Someone thumped against it. "Hey Rooki, you going to hog the bathroom all night or what?"

"I'll be out in a minute."

He hefts himself up, opening and closing his eyes to chase away the blurring. There is a sink near him and he open it, drinking the cold water and splashing his face. The man in the mirror in front of him is ashen and sweaty, but he isn't blue and there's nothing about him that screams 'Force-Sensitive with serious headache from diminishing Empire morale' so it will have to do.

Solo rolls his eyes when Boshi opens the door and steps aside. He turns his face away, in case he noticed something on his expression. "Finally, you were there ages. Wait up and we'll go to the game room."

Because Solo isn't a terrible roommate and a better person that he gives himself credit for, he asks Bodhi if he wants to tag along when he comes out of the bathroom.

"It's just that you look like a herd of nerfs ran you over. Hangover?"

"Bad headache," he corrects, and tries for a tight smile. It's a failure, going by Han's dubious expression. He's projecting some true concern in the Force, thought. That makes him smile a little more. "But when have I ever missed game night?"

Dantooine he used to hide during storms, borrowing on his favorite alcove like a weasel or a rat. Storm days were holidays, of a sort: no lessons, no katas. Aton and Meetra would tell him tales throusand of years old, and Grandmother Bastile would convince Grandfather Revan to play games with the pebbles and boards Bodhi had carved crudely.

Tonight there is a storm outside, so the usual group had settled in one of the hangar side rooms and taken out the cards and dices. That is the one thing that does not change.

"Your turn, Rook."

Bodhi startles, distracted and still dazed from the thudding in his head. He looks down at his cards and frowns. It's a very slight frown, and a complete bluff. Bodhi knows he looks nervous, and lets his hand linger half a second too long before pulling put a four.

"Come on, you gotta have something higher than that," Solo scoffs. Bodhi shrugged and gave a half smile, not looking down at the ace in his hands.

"I'm just not very lucky, I guess."

Another pilot nudged Solo and rolled his eyes. "Get on with it. We don't have all night, you know."

Deprived of most other vices, the students at the Academy tend to turn to gambling as a pass time, and way to gains little money on the side. He is plenty card games and games of chance, and dozens of ways to cheat by counting cards, using the Force to nudge dices or read his opponents moved before they make them. It is good fun, and a good opportunity to sniff out gossip.

Bodhi had made sure to become a part of his classes' gambling group on the first weeks, and to cultivate a reputation as a reasonably decent player.

Right now he is really regretting setting himself for this reputation, but continuity is key. He needs to be known as a creature if habits, and a headache can't be allowed to change that.

It's hard to play attention when he had played more difficult games as a kid. As with most parts of this -- plan, or whatever it was, Bodhi doesn't dare to show his true colors. It isn't a problem, usually, beyond the obvious. He is hardly sociable, and he hadn't planted himself as a mole on the Empire to make friends. But gambling is second nature, and he has to sacrifice money and pride to keep up appearances.

Bodhi should be revising for an exam on physics he's taking in two days, but Cadet Rook is known for procrastinating when it comes to gambling. Besides, rising very high in the hierarchy isn't part of the plan. He'd talked it out with Grandfather, who had a close understanding of how Empires work. He'll take the fighter piloting course and fail, and eventually settle on some boring, mid-low level job. Assistant, or cargo shipper, or messenger. Something to keep him close to goods and information without being of any importance.

And meanwhile, there are games of chance to play.

"Does anyone have any dice?" He asks. "I want to see if I can get my luck to change."

 

 

 

There is this forgotten Force technique. Well, there are plenty of forgotten Force techniques these days, but this one has only ever been used in battle, and so it is forgotten. There are few remaining Jedis, and none of them dare the front lines anymore.

That is quite alright. This is not a technique for the front lines. It is behind the curtain that the magic happens.

It's like this: you have a mob. Or a battlefield, or, say, an Academy. Say you are Force Sensitive. Say you are kept awake at night with the pressure of a hundred minds, and that those minds are being molded, drugged, stripped of identity. Suppose that you are fighting for your identity. Suppose that you want to help others, bring peace to living and dead alike. Suppose that you are good with minds, and souls, and the difference between them. Say you are an artisan, a spy, a watcher. You have felt war in your bones, in the reals beyond bones and flesh. You have been more than bone and flesh, and remain so to straddle the line between whole and separate.

Suppose there is a line between the whole and the separate, a thin, easily crossed line, and that the war depends on you. Your ability to take malleable minds and nudge them, a little, just a little.

There is a technique for this, and an ancient saying among the Jedi Sentinels to go with it:

Though our souls might be stained with Darkness, it has has no claim on us, for we give others Light where there is none.

 

 

  
In his dreams Bodhi stands in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. It is night, dark shadows curling around the vines and the bushes and the ferns growing on clay vases, and a dangerous quiet hangs heavy over the sound of running fountains and artificial streams. The only light is far away, reflecting shallow and thin on the water. Everything feels very alive and tense and familiar.

Rarely is he alone. Sometimes it is one of his chéche mates, or Master Yoda. Sometimes it is Knight Skywalker, red 'saber dirty with red blood. Always Bodhi looks down at the water of the broadest fountain, and in the ripples he sees patterns and secrets. Often they were images of ds trustion, impressions of pain and fear in stranger's eyes, but they could just as well be twin suns shining on a golden desert, or a distant figure striding among the stars,

No matter how many variations of the same dream Bodhi goes through, the quiet never changes, nor the shadows circling the fountains.

Waking up is always a sonorous experience in Dantooine. But in the dreams Bodhi does not know he is dreaming, and so waking up to the heady scents and bird callings of another Temple's ruins  
never stops feeling like a loss.

 

 

(A lesson:

"Everything that is connected to something else has a shattering point," Master Shan tells him, back before she is Master and he is Padawan. It is early afternoon in Dantooine, after the monsoon season: the light is a bold blue, giving a stronger tint to her ghostly figure.

Meetra would be the best person to explain this to young Bodhi. But Meetra would not speak of it, not now, and no one wanted Darth Revan sharing Force Lore with an impressionable child. So it was Bastila that taught him, and even then she knew she was bound to that task.

She had never had the reason to wonder whether padawan bonds could form beyond death, but apparently it was so.

Crosslegged and solemn, Bodhi follows the track of her hand motions in the air with wide eyes.

"Everything that is and has been, people and events and possibilities, is connected in the Force. It runs through them with its own design, a Living and Unifying net. Every net has a weak point, and much like a body can be brought down by injuries, they can be hurt. If events torn those links apart, a great wound is created in the Force. Those events are called shatterpoints, as well as the people who cause them, or suffer in close proximity."

She kneels down at his level. She is not without compassion, and not without love. He does not trust her yet, but he will. "Do you have any questions, Bodhi?"

He frowns down at the dirt, tangling his fingers in a tuft of grass and pulling. "Is that why I can see you? Because I -- make the Force hurt?"

"No, Bodhi. You can see me because when the Force was aching, you were alive and kind and hurting, too. Like calls to like, Bodhi. Remember that."

"I will, Grandmama.")

 

 

  
In Dantooine, there isn't much to do but create. The very place is suited for it, with trees larger than many men holding hands and good-smelling clay. Even when Bodhi was still reeling from -- from everything, he had tried to do something whole and beautiful with his hands.

His first handcrafted creation is a lumpy, lopsided thing, woven by childish fingers. It is supposed to be a bowl of sorts, reeds from the river bed curling around stronger twigs. Meetra - she had asked him too call her Meetra - had been the one to guide him. She had learned the craft in her years as an exile, and her lessons serve Bodhi well. He spends many hours like that, sitting in the jagged floor of the courtyard, listening to her speaking softly and entangling his fingers in fragile work.

His fingers gain dexterity with practice. He likes it, the weaving, having something to keep his fingers busy. It is a necessity as well, along with wood and stone carving and scavenging for berries and hunting, though he really does not like hunting. There are a number if tasks to be performed to ensure survival in an abandoned planet, and between that and his continuous education as a Jedi, Bodhi is kept busy enough.

Those lessons are the only reason his quarters in the Enclave aren't so uncomfortable. I the beginning he sleeps in a room by a side door, the better to run into the jungle if anyone came, but in time he explores all the crannies and hiding places of the Enclave, and chooses a room with a wide space for a window and vines with purple blossoms hanging in the walls. It is also the reason he tries his hand at glassmaking, using a bonfire, sand from the riverbed and generous application of the Force, and discovers a new hobby.

He supposes the bowl is still there, along with his pellet and the line of pretty pebbles he had found and placed by the window sill. The old jar he has blued together with tree sap, along with the blackboards he had found and the chalk he had painstakingly pressed together.

He had kept the window closed, but the birds of Dantooine are smart. Perhaps the bowl will be shredded, if ever he comes back. He doesn't worry about it too much, though he longs for the old dank stones and the murmuring of the cold drafts.

The purple flowers will bloom whether he is there or not. He thinks of them often before sleep, in the darkness under his Empire issued blankets, and the though of those familiar petals spreading towards the forest-dappled sunlight is a reassurance and a relief.

 

 

 

Han leaves. Han was always going to leave; it is in the way he steps in the ground, the way his clothes always seem to accumulate travel-dust. Bodhi hadn't had anything to do with it, really. That would have meant outright mental manipulation, and he he isnt comfortable with that, no matter how hypocritical it might be coming from someone broadcasting rebel sympathy in the Force.

If Han's wanderlust happened to grow in the days after Bodhi found out about the Star Killer, then it is simply a convenient coincidence. That's his story and he's sticking with it, no matter Atton's ribbing about Bodhi protecting his crush from the evil claws of the Empire.

He tries to deny the crush thing to, but it's fairly impossible to hide that sort of thing from the dead, especially the nosy dead.

The farewells are short and to the point, no communication information exchanged. The room is left empties and colder. For the first time in a long time, Bodhi feels the lack of a breathing presence close by.

He doesn't have much time to wallow before Master Shan shows up, Grandfather Revan in toe. Meetra and Atton are arguing about something, but their conversation fades soon enough.

There is quiet, a thrumming silence taunt with potential, until Bodhi runs a hand down his face and looks at them from between his fingers.

"I don't suppose you know of anyone inside the Empire likely to help stop the Star Destroyer?"

Revan does not stride forward so much as he changes locations. It's funny; he always forgets how much he looks like his grandfather until he seems him amused. They have the same grin.

"Worry not, young padawan. I know just the man."

 

 

  
Galen Erso does not shine in the Force so much as he _flows_ , a feeling of continuous, subtle motion like an underground river. Muffled and cool and secretly feeding a small universe of life. Bodhi likes him from the first. There is a foundation of loyalty in him, and determination, but ruthlessness enough to win Darth Revan's approval.

He likes him even better when Master Shan turns to him and says, "This one is a traitor already."

Bodhi's own perception of treason differs greatly from that of the Empire. He has never belonged to that great cold machine — he had been too young to be a true Jedi, and since then he has never belonged to any system expect the Force, and that in itself was a vague and fickle support. But he is observant, and good at making deductions. It's part of what makes him a good pilot, the ability to plot a variety of routes and choose the one that applies best to the situation.

The course of events is this: fours weeks before the Star Destroyer is supposed to come online, Bodhi Rook kidnaps Galen Erso.

 

 

 

 

_[ **3** ]_

  
.

Galen Erso is not having a comfortable day. His head hurts from being hit (with a microscope, of all things), his stomach is turning from hyperspace travel sickness, and his closest acquaintance on Eadu had gone and kidnapped him.

Granted, this is also the most interesting day he'd had in years, but he really could have done without the blow to the head.

"Who are you really, then?" He asks. His hands are unbound; there is no weapon pointed at him. But the metal around his creaks under a rule other than physics, and there is a weight in the hair that brings to mind long storms and old legends. Galen's heart rises in his throat, and olong with it memories of discussions with Lyra come to mind. She had been the one who knew anything about -- bit it isn't possible, the probability alone is staggeringly low --

(He doesn't allow himself to hope, and yet, and yet--)

The pilot looks at him through his shaded goggles and smiles. "I am a Jedi, like my grandparents before me."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

 

_[ **4** ]_

 

. 

The most remarkable thing about the Imperial Science Division Archives is how sparse they are. Scientists working for the glory of the Emperor are, as a rule, far too invested in their research go bother with failsafes. The important life skill of copying an important document and shelving it in another place, just in case, seemed to have passed them by completely, or become a forgotten vestige of their days as lowly students.

Bodhi isn't sure the whole thing isn't part of a wide-reaching conspiracy to take down the Empire, because he had a hard time believing such high ranking academics had, to a one, forgotten a valuable trick that had saved his ass when he had accidentally erased his essay on engine systems on his first week at the Academy. You saved your documents on your Academy Archives account, or at least their drafts, in case something went wrong or you had use of them in the future. This was particularly useful for officers on their first stations, when they needed to be sure about some regulation and all they had to do was acess their old Academy email and riffle through their old saved documents.

Galen Erso, owning to a ridiculously good memory and a stupidly high intellect, did not believe in the benefits of saved documents. He especially did not believe in saving drafts of the plans for the flaw he had installed in the Death Star. It would put him at risk, if he were ever to be found out, and was simply to valuable to be left to hover in the Empire-ruled intranet. He had erased everything continuously, in separate intervals during hid working progress, offering only a modified version to director Krennic, before he gave his accent and the plans - the true, terrible, seditious plans - were sent to Scarif.

In this, if nothing else, Krennic and Erso agreed: the plans were too important to be sent by intranet. So the data disk was sealed in a box, the box sealed in a crane, and the crane given to a cargo pilot to fly to Scarif.

That is not what happens.

What happens is that Bodhi spent a terrible trip sweating and bitting his nails with nerves, flew to Scarif, gave the sealed crage with the sealed box to the Cargo Supervisor, employed liberal use of the Force to make sure no one would even considerer the possibility of noticing anything out of the ordinary about the disk inside the box inside the crate.

Then he flew back to Eadu, the real plans inside the stolen disk hidden in a compartment in the ship, walked towards the laboratory, apologized and knocked Galen Erso unconscious.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

 

 

 

_[ **5** ]_

 

 .

"This is not a kidnapping," he tells Galen Erson, the moment they leave Eadu for hyperspace.

Galen Erso, holding a hand to the back of his head, gives him a look of great skepticism.

"It's not! It's a rescue."

He spares one last look at the darkness eating away at the periphery of the cockpit window. Good Riddance, Bodhi thinks to to the small pinprick that is Eadu, rapidly disappearing in a blur of light and wide wide space. He sighs when they leave Eadu's gravitational orbit for good, shoulders slumping in relief.

One step done, a dozen more still to go.

Here, where space and time blur together, and stars seem close enough to clutch, Bodhi finds a joy that is impossible anywhere else. The Force sings, lilting and unknowable, and he finds himself extending his awareness outwards, sinking in and soaking in it.

The other passenger twitches, a single tightening of his muscles, before deliberately relaxing again.

He narrows his eyes and blinks. Bodhi had probably been too heavy handed with that microscope. It wasn't like he went around knocking people unconscious, he didn't know how much strenght to apply. He'd considered using the Force to will him to sleep, the way he did with prey on Dantooine, to give them a more merciful death. But Bodhi had always hated hunting, and it hadn't sat well with him.

Besides. The Force had had been pulsing, murmuring urgently as it did even now, clamoring for the skies with haste

(flee flee before this planet is swallowed in a rainfall of blood and he drowns in it--)

\--and he had a permanent awareness of the disk hiding behind a box of space astromech parts droid since the moment he had exchanged it for a double. There was no time, no sense in tarrying, and everything to lose if he was found out.

His skin still feels like it is stretching too thin against his bones, but at least they are in hyperspace. It had been surprisingly easy to stow away Galen and take off from Eadu. He is under no impression that this luck will hold, but it would be stupid and ungrateful not to make use of it while it's around.

Still, he doesn't sense any immediate danger, for all that he is alone in a stolen ship with a concussed – well. Someone he has forcefully rescued. It is awkward, but most things about Bodhi are, so it's not exactly a surprise.

"I suppose you have a plan. Beyond rescuing me, I mean." Galen says. Bodhi has to give him points for not making it sound like a question, when he himself is still very much in doubt. "I have to say, I didn't see that coming. My own fault, I suppose – no one gets that good a sabbac face without practice."

Bodhi shrugs humbly. "My grandfather taught me some."

Galen's highbrow rise impressively, a show of incredulity and a question for details both. "Your grandfather. The Jedi."

"Many of the best gambles in the galaxy are Force-Sensitive," Bodhi says, keeping the _unlike you_  to himself. Galen would never have made Jedi. Bodhi had met more Force-sensitive pebbles. What talent he had for mental obfuscation and winning against the odds had more to do with a comprehensive grasp on the laws of probabilities and how sentient beings thought. "Some of the best cheaters as well."

Bodhi has his head turned towards the panel, filling the last of the coordinates, but if he looked behind he would see Galen's lips pursed tightly. He can feel his eyes in the back of his head; he had hardly looked away from Bodhi since his return to conscience. It's an intense stare, disconcerting, but Bodhi has gone fishing with Darth Revan and stood morning inspection every morning for the last fours years. He can handle disconcerting gazes, especially since Galen keeps blinking and squinting at bright lights.

Galen does one of his almost-smiles, charming, somehow inquisitive while seeming detached. A front, but one can't hardly blame him. However he had expected his day to go, this certainly isn't it. "Are you a cheater, Bodhi?"

Bodhi considers being cryptic, but it isn't his style, not to mention he isn't very good at pulling it off. Besides, honesty is what he is going for.

"I count cards, but I try to use my abilities only for a good cause. Most of the time, they make for an unfair advantage." Besides, games of luck take on a new meaning when you feel the Force. "But you know how it is. Sometimes cheating is the only viable choice. The only right choice, for the Galaxy. Or else all the stars risk being turned to dust."

You had to hand it to him: Galen picked everything up instantly. They share a look, fast and measured, ripe with understanding. Not trust yet, but Bodhi can sense potential there, along with a sense of surprise and caution, yearning and dawning amusement.

"You must understand, a loyal Imperial head of research officer will cause quite a ruckus by going missing," he says softly. More a warning than a threat. Bodhi has to hold back a smile. He appreciates the gesture, but not the doubt. This isn't some reckless spur-of-the-moment thing, even if he wishes he had had more time to prepare.

"A loyal Imperial head of research will cause no questions if he wants to personally supervise the last of the kyber crystal's mining." No questions expect Krennic's, who had made it very clear Galen is not to leave Eadu, but by the time he notices Bodhi and Galen will be very far away.

That Galen us loyal only to his own designs is left unsaid, but clearly heard.

"Before I say anything else," Bodhi starts, then stops. He opens and closed his eyes, chews on his cheeks, before continuing more slowly. "There are dark forces in the galaxy, Galen. I know you have little reason to trust me, and I do want you to trust me –" I want to be trustworthy in your eyes –"but please, listen to me. I really am a Jedi, I know abut these things. You might have been their conduit, but you are not part of them."

Bodhi smiles, something tentative and small. Galen looks at him with his wolf-eyes, and Bodhi thinks he would like to touch him, maybe, squeeze his shoulder or wrist. "I told you. This is a rescue mission."

Galen just looks at him, his regard heavy. This, Bodhi knows, is important. He wants it to come out right, because Galen deserves that. "You can leave. You can tell me the name of some abandoned planet or moon and I'll land there. No one will know. If that's what you want, you won't have to be a part of this war."

It is freedom that he is offering, some measure of it. A man like Galen, a slave for almost two decades, knows its value more than most. Bodhi (with a nose full of the smell of plasma and frankincense, hands that shake from a soul-wound) is not like most, in this regard.

He doesn't expect Galen to flee, truly. The man isn't a coward, and his sense of guilt and responsibility are too strong and fresh not to move him forwards. But it is still a relief when he looks up, chin stern, and says, "Thank you for the offer, Bodhi, but it will not be necessary. Though I do wonder. I am going on the assumption that you know about the flaw?"

"Project Stardust. I know about it." He adds, because this isn't the time to be dancing around the subject, "I also know about the flaws you planted, and that you meant to warn someone about it."

"I don't have the plans with me," Galen says. This is not true, but not a lie, either; he has them in his mind, but he has no way to know that Bodhi knows that. People calling themselves Jedi aren't necessarily Jedi, and even so, there are many different paths for the followers of the Code.

(Bodhi follows the Old Code. He prefers not to deal in absolutes if possible).

And it isn't a problem, really, since Master Shan had been haunting Galen for months now, and new the project almost as well as him. Definitely well enough to teach Bodhi how to find it in the maze of files that makes up Eadu's Research Archive, so he knew exactly what he had to deal with.

Force, that had been a nightmare. Bodhi had grown up in an abandoned planet, for kriff's sake, the only technology he had access to was the ship that had taken him there and four thousand years old computers. Slicing is so far from his skill set it isn't even funny. Which is not to say that planning and committing heists in any easier, but in a way it is closer to his comfort zone. The plotting, the hiding in plain sight, the knowledge of the secret he carries, all its danger and potential; it's heady, but familiar, after so long inside the Empire.

"I meant to send them to Shaw, with you maybe, but--"

"Shaw isn't part of the Alliance anymore," Bodhi interrupts. Atton has taken a shine to the Resistance and likes to update them all on the going ons. He isn't sure, but he thinks maybe he and Master Shan have a bet on how long until Shara Bey and Kes Dameron get together.

It's strange, that he knowns so much of other people's lives, other parts of the galaxy from the second hand account of observer's. Stranger still to think he is going to experience many of those things for his own.

"And besides," he says, "you don't need to worry about the plans."

"Are we to meet Saw Guerrera on Jedha, then?" Galen asks. His voice is even but is mind is running fast to a single thought.

( Jyn Jyn Stardust where are you how are you are you safe will I see you soon)

"Among others," Bodhi lies. He hopes he's lying. The stories he's heard of Saw Guerrera had painted a fearsome image, especially after he left the Alliance. "There are others higher in the hierarchy better served with this – knowledge."

"You have it?" Galen demands brusquely, leaning forward, fingers pressed together almost like in prayer.

"Yes," Bodhi says, truth heavy in his mouth, his lungs, the ship. It lies between them bold and unabashed,

Galen blinks, his lips quirking after a moment. "A kidnapper, a spy, and now a thief. I didn’t know that was standard Jedi behavior."

"You must not know much about Sentinel Jedis, then," Bodhi says drily, and smiles back. It's a bit surreal, speaking about this so plainly with a living person - his chest feels light and heavy, and suddenly he's bitting back a childish grin.

"Not much, no. But I would not mind knowing more." He says, palms open wide, eyes frank. His mind a hungry maw; no, Galen Erso would never mind knowing more about anythibg. 

"Well, you're in luck. The Alliance does not even know they have a Jedi at their disposal. At the moment, you're the only one Bodhi says , and it isn't funny, it isn't, except you. So if you want something levitate or a great piece of ancient wisdom, my schedule is clear."

It isn't even very funny — Bodhi, as a result of being brought up with dead spirit's, with the dubious sense of humor of the departed, has a bizarre, off-hand sense of humor — Galen's lips twist again, higher. Bodhi has to fight the urge to laugh again, to giggle like an initiate sharing a secret.

"I shall keep that in mind. And I should thank you for the rescue, then." Galen tilts his head. Sideways, bird-like, not downwards like an Imperial bow. "Jedi Rook."

Bodhi nods without speaking. Galen stares at him some more, then leans back on the bench. His presence in the Force unfurls, for lack of a better word, relaxing into some semblance of confidence, something not unlike trust.

Bodhi relaxes, too. He had been making a conscious effort to seem even more unthreatening than usual, but it makes sense that Galen wouldn't trust that. He'd looked perfectly unthreatening that morning too, right before apologizing and hefting the microscope.

And it is more comfortable, too, to stand that little bit taller. Galen does not say so, but his shoulders rise, and Bodhi knows he feels the same, too.

 

 

They sit in silence for a long while. The change in circumstances is hard to digest for both of them, and the engines rumble along to the turmoil their thoughts. Bodhi, strangely, longs for tea, the crushed flowers and berries he used to pick on Dantooine, the ones who smelled of fresh growing things and the other, that only bloomed briefly during monsoon season, that tasted like heavy rain does, with a tang of lightening as they went down. He thinks it would help his head feel clear, or his heart cleaner, at least.

While Bodhi checks the monitors for the eleventh time to make sure the fuel tanks are full, Galen goes to the fresher to clean his head of the bacta that had been his hair when he had awakened. The lump from the microscope to the head had receded completely, and the headache that had been brewing behind his ears his gone, too.

He sits closer to Bodhi when he comes back, and asks, "What more should I know?"

Bodhi clears his throat and mimics Galen - elbows in keens, eyes unwavering. He does not hide his shaking hands. Bodhi's hands had been shaking since he had stopped being an Initiate, since his home had been swept away in blood and ash, and the Force started howling at him every other moment. There is no point in covering that, now.

"Please correct me if I am wrong, but when you started the project for the Death Star, they gave you sketches from Separatist origin, right? I bet they were pretty outdated, too. Four thousands years out of date, say, give or take?"

But what's a couple millennium to the urge to destroy? The Sith had always been ruthless, and careful, and patient.

"What do you know about the Jedi Civil War?"

Galen doesn't answer right away. Which, fair enough, it's a strange question. Bodhi hears him leaning in his knees, can picture the exact mannerisms. He bad been watching Galen for some time, and they had been friends, of a sort. As close to friends as Imperial soldiers with rebel sympathies and different ranks can be.

Not that Galen had known about Bodhi's rebel sympathies, but he had to have suspected that he didn't entirely agree with the Empire, at least. Perhaps they might have spoken of it, if the occasion called for it, if Galen had needed his help, but as it was, the closest they had come to breaching the issue had been while discussing their pasts while gambling uniform buttons.

There's not much doubt about Bodhi's affiliation right now, and a part of him delights in it. No matter what happens now, the course has been set. Never again will he stand beneath the Empire and claim false loyalty towards a monstrous organization. Rebillions are bloody business, but their dream is a good one, the only dream that has place in his heart.

"It took place some four thousand years ago, roughly. Records are hard to find, but it is widely believed that it began as a conflict between the Republic and a group of Mandalorean Crusaders with expansion ambitions. From I remember – and I was never much into history, so I might be wrong – The Republic Army tarried in answering, but a group of wayward Jedi created a militia. I believe It was eventually revealed that the Mandalorean involvement was a plot by the Sith, to draw the Jedi into the war, but by them both warring fleets had been destroyed. A superweapon called the Mass Shadow Generator obliterated Malachor V, giving victory to the Republic."

Galen stops for a moment, before adding, "But it was for nothing. The leaders of the Republic were corrupted by the Sith, and a new Empire spread through the galaxy."

He doesn't ask why his captor wants a history lesson. The quiet hangs over them, steel-cold stillness to the background of the engines working. He wonders what conclusion Galen is coming to, what dots he is connecting.

"That is true," Bodhi agrees, "but not all of it. Or there would not have been another Republic, yes? And in the end, the ones that were corrupted found their way back to the Light." He waves a hand, a distracted gesture he had picked up from Atton.

Galen's face shifts. After a moment his shoulders sink, and he presses a hand against his face. The Force throbs around him, swollen with cold realization. He feels, for a moment, like a star collapsing, all of his guilt and horror, the grief and loneliness curling around each other, feeding on each other.

Bodhi, damnably soft hearted despite everything, places a hand on his shoulder. He could have eased his anguish with the Force, his own stilted forgiveness and understanding regret a balm, but he doesn't. Galen wouldn't have thanked him for it. Galen would want no redemption but the one he built himself. Bodhi respects that.

"Yet these days there is little enough Light. With the Jedi dead, there was little hope for the galaxy."  
Galen retorts. And, even softer than usual: "You have to understand why I did it."

"I do," Bodhi says quietly, because Galen is really speaking to himself.

"I have a daughter."

"I know."

Jyn Erso is not at the forefront of her father's mind. She is the backdrop, the faint starlight tinting his world, shaping boundaries and orbits. He loves her, as much as Galen Erso can love; he lives for her, as much as anyone devoted to his mind and the compulsion of creation can live for someone else.

He doesn't understand, not really. Bodhi's love for his family, strange and terrible as they are, is a sure, loyal thing, but it is beyond death. One day he too will die, and be with them in the Force fully, in a way not even the deepest meditation can achieve. Until then he lives, and learns, tries to bring some measure of balance to the galaxy. In many ways, he is the recipient of an old debt, inheritance heavy in his shoulders.

It had been much simple in Dantooine, when knowledge was hard to grasp and dangerous but never really put in practice. It had been easy to train battle meditation on the minds of the orangoutangs, almost fun to plot different plans. This is the real world, now, more than the Academy was, and the game Bodhi is playing is volatile, stakes higher than anyone should have the power to gamble with .

Galen Erso is a long time player who knows the time for the great move is close. He would have acted, somehow, and perhaps it would have been enough. It would certainly been more sensible for Bodhi to let him see it through on his own, but then, that is not the way of the Jedi.

And anyway, it would have been a mistaken. You can destroy a evil you do not understand, but understanding is the condition for a complete victory.

"Tell me everything," Galen says, and Bodhi does.

 

 

Among the hierarchy of Jedi ranks, there were none as mysterious and feared as the Shadows.

Often, their very identities were erased, biological facts scraped from thr Temple archives. Their relationships were put aside for a life of espionage, without recognition other than whispers in corridors and clandestine meeting with Council members. They were the ones who went on to delved into the Dark, the ones who kept its grow at bay. Theirs was the responsibility of finding the Sith artifacts of olden days, and destroying them.

The first Shadows had been Sentinels. Eventually, the duty had passed on to Councilors, but it is important to remember. The first Shadow was a Sentinel.

"Her name was Bastila Shan," Bodhi tells Galen. "She was the one who hid the plans for the Mass Shadow Generator, after the Jedi Civil War."

"I suppose it would have been too much to ask for it to have been destroyed." Galen's words are underlined by a weary bitterness. Bodhi bristles at the rebuke meant for his grandmother.

"By then the Sith were still very much a problem. The Republic was growing, but only centuries after another Sith Empire rose. It seems to keep happening, Republic, Empire, Republic again."

"So the rhythm of the universe in on our side. That's heartening."

"It's something," Bodhi says under his breath. Galen huffs out an agreement. "What matters is that we have the plans, and soon the Rebellion will know about the Death Star."

Galen frowns. "Don't they know already?"

He clears his throat, fighting a wave of sheepishness. "Ah, well. I have a friend of mine working on that."

 

 

(And before this conversation, or a little after, or in between:

"I need to find my daughter. I will help the Alliance to the best of my ability, naturally, but Jyn is the condition for my help."

"I thought you would say that." 

"You know where she is? How -- how she is?"

"We sort of are on our way to get her. Sorry, it was presumptuous, but I figured you wouldn't want to wait."

"I -- Yes, of course it's alright, it's more than -- _thank you_. Do you know where she is, then?” 

"In prison. Labour camp, really."

_"What?"_

"Oh, wait. That came out wrong. No, she's fine, really. Got in a bit of trouble taking down some dictator. She's very brave, Galen."

"That -- that does sound like Stardust. She was so courageous, even as a child."

"I can imagine."

"Dare I ask if you stole the blueprints for the prison too?"

"Well--"

"I am not condemning you, Bodhi. Goodness knows I have to high ground to speak of. And I will never have anything but gratitude for whatever you do to find and free my daughter."

"She is very lucky to have you."

"Luckier still to have a Jedi from legend to break her out of prison. On my own this would be impossible. And much less thrilling, too."

"It's not all that thrilling, really. At least so far. It's going to change now, but it does make it easier to infiltrate high security labour camps.."

"You do that, Jedi Rook, and I will be in your debt forever."

"That's -- really not necessary."

"I think it is. And if I were a betting man - which I am - I would bet that there will be many more indebted to you, before the end."

"I hope you're wrong, but. Probably not, knowing my luck." 

"You will not have to do it alone, Bodhi. I want you to know that."

"Oh, mm. Thanks. I'm not very used to counting on people that aren't family. Being a secret Jedi doesn't make friendships easy. But I guess you'd know all about that, uh? ."

"I do. And knowing that, I would be honored to be your friend.'

"Me too."

"It's always pleasant to have a friendly behind to kick at sabacc."

"Ah, you _wish,_ Erso.")

 

  
(And this, also:

"I'm not complaining, but you know, I'm not, thanks for believing me. But you took the whole Jedi thing pretty easily."

"You're wondering why a scientist with a critical mind and a tendency to fact check extensively took their kidnappers - _rescuer's_ \- word on being part of a mystical organization?"

"Yes. That."

"Bodhi, are you aware that you are floating a foot from your seat? Literally floating in the air, unsupported."

"Oh. Really? Sorry. It happens sometimes."

"I gathered. No offense meant, but I am quite surprised that you managed to hide for so long."

"The Force has been with me."

"Let's hope it stays around, then.)

 

 

 

 

 _[ **6** ]_ 

 

 .

Bodhi is nine, the age most Senior Initiates were starting to get considered as Padawans, when the ghosts sit him down in a great ruined room and explain his option.

"You don't have to be a Jedi. I can teach you how to wait," Atton says, "how to choose the right moment. I can teach you how to fight, how to hunt, how to lie and cheat. I can teach you how to be invisible to kill painlessly, and how to die for a just cause."

"I can teach you to be knowledgeable," Grandfather Revan says, "how to make knowledge into a knife and a knife into an armor. I can teach you how to shape the world the way you want it to be. You can be safe from everyone but yourself."

"From me you can learn how to be quiet enough to hear the universe speaking. I can teach you how to hide, and how to run without ever being found." Meetra tells him. Her smile is a little rueful around the edges. "But I do not think you want to be lost forever."

Grandmama kneels down before him. She in see-through, and the bush of honeysuckle behind her is visible as from the other side of an old tarnished window. Her words come out solid, though, like something he can lean on, grow tall around. "I could teach all that I know, about darkness and light and the spaces in between, the space that are neither and both, and it will not be enough. You will have to compromise in many things, but not yet. There is no reason why you can't take what we all have to give. Having more than one teacher never hurt anyone, no matter what the Enclave thought. Force knows this isn't a conventional situation."

They tell him he will always be able to ask them from whatever lessons he wants, but that he can choose his own Master. Bodhi thinks on it for three days, walking down the river, building little boats of old bark and some leaves, watching them bob up and down and sink.

He chooses Grandmama. He takes after her the most, after Bastila Shan who asked too many questions, who manipulated and loved and trusted a Sith Lord. Who was Sith and Jedi and neither, both, was herself to the last, and learned not to apologize for it.

(Their first lesson is on glassblowing. She has him go to the river and the dusty training rooms, bring back to the courtyard pail after pail of sand, and then tells to ignite a focused bonfire with the driest fallen boughs he can find. The smell of this wood burning his familiar to him by now, sweet and somehow damp, as all things in Dantooine are.

To be focused on the whole, while giving attention and importance to the smaller elements. It's a solid metaphor. Eventually, Bodhi learns how to make a variety of glasses, tinted and clear, curved. and straight. The purple-red heart of the flames, the smell of charred sand, the singed ends of his hair. All this becomes familiar, and comfortable, and pleasant, as he learns how to build something fragile and beautiful and useful put of minuscule, scattered parts.)

 

 

 

  
Bodhi wakes up from a familiar dream bordering on a nightmare - the running silver water of the fountains, echoless sounds in the stillness - to the feeling of a roiling stomach. It takes him a moment to realize that it's not his sensation. He gets up from the captain's seat where he had fallen asleep, and walks downstairs to the bundle of blankets he had set on a long cold bench for Galen to sleep in.

Galen himself is a trembling wreck, fists clenching convulsively at the blankets. His skin is an ugly grey under the wan light of the lower deck, the one small porthole reflecting distant starlight on his sweaty face.

"Are you space sick?" Bodhi asks, worried. There are tablets for that, but he isn't sure they were part of the regulation first aid kit.

"No," says Galen. He is hunched other, eyes closed, and when he opens them there is an undeniable feverish quality to his gaze. "I haven't taken the stims in twenty hours."

Bodhi blows out a breath. He has to stifle a groan. He had forgotten about the stims, since he had spent his whole career with the Empire hiding them under his tongue and spitting them out in toilets. To be fair, he had thought Galen of all people would have found a way around them, and he tells him so.

"Normally, yes, I would have gotten away with it, but scientists in high risk projects are kept on a strict diet of stim-infused food. It was either that or starvation, and Director Krennic took offense to the last."

That isn't surprising. Bodhi had heard a great deal about Director Krennic, both out loud and in trooper's thoughts. And it did made sense that they would want the scientist in top mental conditions.

"How long?" He asks.

"The detox should run its course during the newt ten hours. You don't happen have --ah- a bucket, do you?"

There is no bucket, but Bodhi finds a box with space parts and empties it in time for Galen to fill it with his last meal. After, he shudders, lifting his head up and looking at him blearily when Bodhi hands him a bottle of water and another blanket.

"My thanks," he says. The words come out strange, from clenched jaws. Bodhi can see his pulse beating too fast to be healthy under the thin skin of his neck.

He stands uncomfortably, not wanting to leave Galen alone, but not sure if it would be presumptuous to sit down.

It comes to him that most kidnappers (alright, he'll admit, it was two thirds a rescue and one part kidnapping) probably don't have problem with that kind of thing. Luckily Galen notices him shifting his weight from one foot to the other and pats the blankets beside him.

Time passes. Hours with Galen trembling and occasionally muttering nonsense. One hour he spends whispering _stardust stardust stardust_ like a mantra. Another is spent emptying his stomach. Bodhi hovers. Galen gives him permission to help the process along with a nudge of the Force, but Bodhi's experience with healing is only on himself and animals, and there is not much to be done but wait out the last of the stimulants.

Bodhi passes the time fetching every hydration patch on board and clean clothes, checking Galen's temperature and waylaying their course for a few more hours. Eventually the trembling subsides, and Galen falls into a deeper sleep than any he had managed before.

  
Bodhi sits down, trying not to make any noise, and leans his head back on the cool metal. He opens his eyes when they start dropping and turns to Galen. He has settled somewhat, blankets kicked off. His is forehead creased even in sleep, but Bodhi imagines that some of the sheer expectation and relief of his presence in the Force are mirrored in his Bodhi. For all that detoxification is unpleasant, Galen's spirit is too eager to escape any vestige of the Empire's hold over his person to think of it as more than a small inconvenience.

He revises the plane for Jyn's rescue, about the warning in the Force and the meeting with the Alliance. No one had told him anything new, which could mean both good and bad news.

Mostly, Bodhi thinks about meditating. It is something he usually does while in transit from one Imperial station to another. The peace he had found to and from Scarif had been fraught with nerves and strange impression in the Force, though. He had fallen asleep on the way there, a restless, uncomfortable slumber. It is strange to think that he had awakened as a servant to the Empire, even if a treacherous one, and the next time he fell asleep it would be as a free man. A free Jedi, soon to be a Jedi Knight, with all the weight of the title.

Meditation sounds very tempting, is the point.

He had never been the stillest person, fidgety even if he is quiet, and meditation tends to be easier when he has his hands busy. An unorthodox practice of moving meditation that the Temple would have frowned at, but he had decided a long time ago not to live by what the Temple would have disavowed.

He rummages under the bench. There is a hatch, hidden in the curve of the metal beneath the seat, and inside a tool box. And in the toolbox there is a data disk. This he takes a puts on his pocket, but what he is looking for is hidden behind that, a thin rounded shape, and inside--

  
"Ah, there you are," he sighs. The kyber crystal is granulated in his hand, warm like flesh but not nearly as yielding. It awakens and brightens at the touch of Force-sensitive fingers, a purple glow that sings with a sense of rightness to Bodhi, so full of life it is like one of those Dantooinian flowers that bloom only in the shadowed corners of ruins.

Bodhi closes his eyes and lets himself enjoy the purposeful thrumming in the Force.

"My wife had one of those."

He looks up, startled. He darts a glance at his hand, but no: perfectly solid and brown, nothing ghostly about it.

"The crystal, not the lightsaber?"

Galen smiles faintly. His eyes are far away with affection and grief, as well as a low fever. "Both. Lyra never spoke of it much, but she was a Jedi. The Clone Wars changed things. She said she could not remain serving an order that used sentient beings as cannon fodder without giving them the respect of being acknowledged as people. I never saw the lightsaber, but sometimes she would hold the crystal, watch it shine green, and I could tell she missed it."

  
There is very little that can be said after that, but Bodhi tries anyway.

"It was a bit of a mess, when I realized I was ferrying kyber crystals," says Bodhi. He'd had to tamp down his Force presence to a very small amount, and the first shifts had left dazed and shaky, to go with the exhaustion of the rigorous and boring flight schedule of a cargo pilot. "All these years living in hiding, and suddenly the most important part of a 'saber is under my nose. I couldn't believe my luck."

He really hadn't, especially when one of the crystals called to him so clearly during a perfectly mundane run between Jedha and Eadu. It had been by far one of the best surprises in his life, even if it had dissipated any chances of convincing Master Shan that he didn't need to train his 'saber katas.

It had been considerably harder to build a lightsaber, but not by much. Most pilots were used to trading small parts and wires between each other on the down low, instead of having to fill forms to the Quartermaster every time they lost a screw. No one had through his trades strange, and since each pilot was assigned a ship and they all knew when regular inspections were to be had, he had been able to keep it a secret without problems. Except for that time when a surprise inspection on his first year on the job had him scrambling to hide the smelting kit under the cockpit.

He snorts, remembering another occasion from his early days as a cargo pilot. "You know, one time you nearly caught me holding active crystals. There they were, shining through the boxes, and you kept coming closer. Scared the kriff out of me."

Galen frowns. "Was that the time you turned around when you saw me coming and shoved the box on Ensign Frei's hands?"

'And you caught up to me and gave me a talking to for rough handling of precious resources," Bodhi says drily. They grin at each other for a moment.

So, of course, that's when the monitor upstairs starts wailing.

He tosses the crystal from one hand to another, holds it up to the silver light scattering shadows from the porthole. The purple light disappears behind the casing when he closes it, but he can feel it steel though the grey durasteel, and it bolster his confidence somewhat.

"I hope you're feeling better," he tells Galen, helping him up and making sure the data disk is still hidden close to his chest. "We're approaching Wobani's atmosphere."

"And after that, Jyn." With his back straight like that, Galen looks almost like Research Director Erso. But no, not quite. Research Director Erson had never shone in the Force like that, so boldly full of purpose.

"And after that, Jyn," Bodhi agrees, and sheathes his 'saber.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://searchingforserendipity25.tumblr.com)


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